I am a Burmese exile taking a near-permanent refuge in New York and Sydney. Here are my essays about Burma and anything else I feel like writing about. And posting the articles I like from selected sites. Bridging Burma to the world this Blog is more of a Politically-Oriented Literary Blog than a Plain News Blog or a Sophisticated Thoughts Blog.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Obama Fucks Israel by Passing Anti-Israeli UN Resolution

JERUSALEM (AP) -- An Israeli official
on Friday accused President Barack Obama of colluding with the Palestinians in
a "shameful move against Israel at the U.N." after learning the White
House did not intend to veto a Security Council resolution condemning
settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem the day before."President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move
against Israel at the U.N.," the official said. "The U.S
administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti-Israeli
resolution behind Israel's back which would be a tail wind for terror and
boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory,"
he said calling it "an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US
policy of protecting Israel at the UN."

Earlier he said Israel's prime minister
turned to President-elect Donald Trump to help head off the critical U.N.
resolution. Although the U.S. opposes the settlements, it has traditionally
used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to block
resolutions condemning Israel, saying that disputes between Israel and the
Palestinians must be resolved through negotiations.

But after eight years of failed peace
efforts during the Obama Administration, Israel has expressed concern the
outgoing president would take an audacious step to leave his mark on the
region. In recent weeks, the White House had been especially secretive about
its deliberations.

The Israeli official's admission marked
a final chapter in the icy relations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and President Barack Obama over the last eight years, and signalled an era of
close ties between Israel and the incoming Trump administration.

Israel knew even before the Egyptian draft resolution that the White
House was planning an "ambush" and coordinating it with the
Palestinians, said another Israeli official, who requested anonymity to discuss
internal diplomatic conversations.

Israeli diplomats believe they were
misled by the U.S. during a meeting last week between high-ranking Israeli and
Obama administration officials in which the U.S. side offered reassurances
about its efforts to support Israel but declined to explicitly state that the
U.S. would veto such a resolution if it came up. The Israelis told their
counterparts that "friends don't take friends to the Security
Council," the official said.

The Egyptian-sponsored resolution had
demanded that Israel halt settlement activities in occupied territories claimed
by the Palestinians and declared that existing settlements "have no legal
validity."

But under heavy Israeli pressure, Egypt
called off a planned vote in the Security Council hours before it was to take
place. In the diplomatic activity ahead of the postponement, both Netanyahu and
Trump issued nearly identical statements urging the U.S. to veto the measure.

"After becoming aware that the
administration would not veto the anti-Israel resolution, Israeli officials
reached out to Trump's transition team to ask for the president-elect's help to
avert the resolution," the Israeli official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity because he was discussing behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity.

On Friday, Egypt said its president had
received a call from Trump in which they both agreed to give the incoming U.S.
administration a chance to try and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The call came hours after Egypt indefinitely postponed the U.N. vote.

A statement from the Egyptian
presidency said the two men spoke by phone early Friday and agreed on "the
importance of giving a chance for the new American administration to deal in a
comprehensive way with the different aspects of the Palestinian issue with the
aim of achieving a comprehensive and a final resolution."

A senior Palestinian official, speaking
anonymously according to protocol, said Egypt didn't consult with the
Palestinians about delaying the vote and it was a "complete shock"
for them. Egypt represents Arab states on the security council. Egypt is the
first Arab country to make peace with Israel, and the two countries have close
security ties in a shared struggle against Islamic militants.

The Palestinian mission to the United Nations said the Security Council
will vote later in the day on the resolution condemning Israel's settlement
construction, now sponsored by New Zealand, Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela.

The U.S., along with the Palestinians
and nearly all of the international community, opposes Israeli settlements in
the West Bank and east Jerusalem as obstacles to peace. Some 600,000 Israelis
live in the two territories, which the Palestinians seek as part of a future
independent state. Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Mideast war.

Trump has signaled he will be far more
sympathetic to Israel. His campaign platform made no mention of the
establishment of a Palestinian state, a core policy objective of Democratic and
Republican presidents over the past two decades. He also has vowed to move the
U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that would put the U.S. at odds
with the Palestinians and almost the entire remainder of the international
community, and his pick for ambassador to Israel, Jewish-American lawyer David Friedman,
is a donor and vocal supporter of the settlements.

The proposed resolution would have been
more than symbolic. While it did not call for imposing sanctions on Israel, its
language could have hindered Israel's negotiating position in future peace talks.
Given the widespread international opposition to the settlements, it would have
been nearly impossible for the Trump administration to reverse it.

It remained unclear Friday whether the measure would come up for a vote
in the council before Obama leaves office.

In a Christmas greeting on Friday,
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said: "Despite the Israeli occupation,
our presence in our homeland and the preservation of our cultural and national
heritage are the most important form of resistance in the face of the darkness
of a foreign colonialist occupying power."

TEL AVIV – In a dramatic departure from
the longstanding U.S. policy of vetoing anti-Israel resolutions, the Obama
administration on Friday abstained from voting on a United Nations Security
Council resolution calling for a halt to Israeli construction in the West Bank
and eastern sections of Jerusalem, thereby allowing the measure to pass. Fourteen
member states voted in favor of the resolution; none voted against, and the
U.S. obstained.

The Times of Israel reports: “Speaking
at the Security Council after the vote, US Ambassador Samantha Power said the
vote underlined the Council’s long-standing position that “the settlements have
no legality.” She claimed the US position was “fully in line with the
bipartisan history” of how US presidents have approached the issue for decades.”

Earlier today, an Israeli official told reporters, including this
reporter at Breitbart Jerusalem, the Obama administration secretly worked with
the Palestinian Authority to craft a “shameful” United Nations resolution
behind Israel’s back, an Israeli official told reporters on Friday.

Obama & Kerry Compromise between Jews & Hamas.

The official told Breitbart Jerusalem
by email: “President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move
against Israel at the UN. The US administration secretly cooked up with the
Palestinians an extreme anti Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which
would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western
Wall occupied Palestinian territory. President Obama could declare his
willingness to veto this resolution in an instant but instead is pushing it.
This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of
protecting Israel at the UN and undermines the prospects of working with the
next administration of advancing peace.”

The Obama administration denied the
claim. “Contrary to some claims, the administration was not involved in
formulating the resolution nor have we promoted it,” an unnamed U.S. official
told Reuters.

The text of the resolution repeatedly and wrongly refers to the West
Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem as “Palestinian territory occupied since
1967.” In actuality, the Palestinians
never had a state in either the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem and they are not
legally recognized as the undisputed authority in those areas.

Jordan occupied and annexed the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem from
1948 until Israel captured the lands in a defensive war in 1967 after Arab
countries used the territories to launch attacks against the Jewish state. In 1988 Jordan officially renounced its
claims to the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.

The text of the resolution declares
that the Israeli settlement enterprise has “no legal validity and constitutes a
flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the
achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive
peace.” It calls for Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement
activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”

As the Committee for Accuracy for
Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) pointed out in an email blast,
international law does not make Israeli settlements illegal.

CAMERA notes: “Article 49 of the Fourth
Geneva Conventions, which is relied upon by those who claim the settlements are
illegal, does not apply in the case of the West Bank. This is because the West
Bank was never under self-rule by a nation that was a party to the Convention,
and therefore there is no “partial or total occupation of the territory of a
High Contracting Party,” as Article 2 of the Convention specifies. Moreover,
even if it did apply, by its plain terms, it applies only to forcible transfers
and not to voluntary movement. Therefore, it can’t prohibit Jews from choosing
to move to areas of great historical and religious significance to them.”

If the resolution is brought to a vote
in its current form and Obama fails to veto, the resolution would contradict a
Bush administration commitment to allowing some existing Jewish settlements to
remain under a future Israeli-Palestinian deal.

That U.S. commitment, which the Obama
administration has repeatedly violated by condemning settlement activity, was
reportedly a key element in Israel’s decision to unilaterally evacuate the Gaza
Strip in 2005.

The UN draft resolution text states
that “cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging
the two-State solution,” and it “calls for affirmative steps to be taken
immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperiling
the two-State solution.”

In 2004, just prior to the Gaza
evacuation, President Bush issued a declarative letter stating that it is
unrealistic to expect that Israel will not retain some Jewish settlements in a
final-status deal with the Palestinians.

The letter stated: “In light of new realities
on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it
is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be
a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous
efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It
is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on
the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

Elliott Abrams, the Deputy National
Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy during Bush’s second term, was
instrumental in brokering understandings between the U.S. and Israel on
settlements. In a June 2009 piece published by the Wall Street Journal, Abrams
accused the Obama administration of “abandoning” those U.S.-Israel
understandings by taking positions critical of all settlement activity.

Abrams wrote: “There were indeed
agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli
settlements on the West Bank … principles that would permit some continuing
growth. … They emerged from discussions with American officials and were
discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003. … The
prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political
reorientation – the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single
Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of
four small settlements in the West Bank. … For reasons that remain unclear, the
Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about
settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government.
We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make
believe it did not exist.”

Muslim Obama stands together with fellow Muslim-Arabs and kicks Israelies out of their Holyland.